Archives: Books

New, practical approaches to confronting today’s most daunting global issues

Fighting climate change, saving democracy, and eradicating poverty are urgent global challenges, yet the world’s leaders continue to pursue outdated policies that focus on one while worsening the tradeoffs between each of them. Shared Prosperity in a Fractured World shows how the nations of the world can achieve all three objectives.

Dani Rodrik provides a bold new vision of globalization, one in which we accelerate the green transition to achieve a sustainable planet, shore up the middle class to restore democracy’s foundations, and hasten economic revitalization in the developing world to put an end to poverty. The rising tide of authoritarianism has demonstrated our inability to alleviate economic anxieties. Economic nationalism has raised the specter of increased protectionism and deteriorating prospects for economic growth. And automation and other new technologies have undercut the advantages of low-cost, unskilled labor in manufacturing and export-oriented industrialization. Rodrik reveals how we can restore prosperity through new forms of collaborative public-private action—to promote renewables and green industries, middle-class jobs, and enhanced productivity in labor-absorbing services—even in the absence of global cooperation. He explains why this new kind of globalization must also recognize the legitimate desire of governments to pursue their economic, social, and security interests autonomously.

Turning conventional economic wisdom on its head, Shared Prosperity in a Fractured World builds on practices that work while radically transforming those that don’t, presenting a grounded, clear-eyed approach to tackling the problems that affect us all, at home and around the world.

A realist defense of constitutional democracy in China that challenges the assumptions of the so-called China Model

With liberal democracies under strain and the Chinese government delivering stability and prosperity to its citizens, is democracy still an ideal worth pursuing in China? In Why China Needs Democracy, Dongxian Jiang makes a powerful case for constitutional democracy in the Chinese context. Doing so, he challenges the so-called China Model, a normative vision that seeks to preserve China’s “meritocratic” one-party system while making it more open, more participatory, and less repressive. Jiang offers instead a realist defense of constitutional democracy that is grounded in a clear-eyed analysis of China’s political realities, a discerning critique of post-Mao moral and institutional problems, and a broad engagement with the findings of empirical political science on both democratic and authoritarian regimes.

Jiang shows that the China Model fails on two realist grounds: it places unwarranted faith in the willingness of China’s leadership to liberalize and share power with citizens; and even with limited power-sharing, the system would be unable to address one of China’s deepest problems—the state’s unchecked domination over ordinary people. For all its flaws, constitutional democracy remains an indispensable framework for limiting the state’s authoritarian overreach. Jiang argues that when realism is understood in a more expansive, historically grounded way—not simply as short-term political feasibility—constitutional democracy in China can be seen to be a realistic and necessary path forward over the long term.

An original study of empire creation and its consequences, from ancient through early modern times

The world’s first great empires established by the ancient Persians, Chinese, and Romans are well known, but not the empires that emerged on their margins in response to them over the course of 2,500 years. These counterempires or shadow empires, which changed the course of history, include the imperial nomad confederacies that arose in Mongolia and extorted resources from China rather than attempting to conquer it, as well as maritime empires such as ancient Athens that controlled trade without seeking territorial hegemony. In Shadow Empires, Thomas Barfield identifies six kinds of counterempire and explores their rise, politics, economics, and longevity.

What all these counterempires had in common was their interactions with existing empires that created the conditions for their development. When highly successful, these counterempires left the shadows to become the world’s largest empires—for example, those of the medieval Muslim Arabs and of the Mongol heirs of Chinggis Khan. Three former shadow empires—Manchu Qing China, Tsarist Russia, and British India—made this transformation in the late eighteenth century and came to rule most of Eurasia. However, the DNA of their origins endured in their unique ruling strategies. Indeed, world powers still use these strategies today, long after their roots in shadow empires have been forgotten.

Looking afresh at the histories of important types of empires that are often ignored, Shadow Empires provides an original account of empire formation from the ancient world to the early modern period.

A user’s guide to navigating the intricate, often contradictory relationship between artificial intelligence and human intelligence

Artificial intelligence will shape our future in unforeseen ways, and it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that it could someday dictate the terms of our very existence. But the fact is, the more that AI can do, the more it underscores the irreplaceable qualities of human creativity, empathy, and moral reasoning. This is one of the eight paradoxes of AI that Virginia Dignum explores in this revelatory book. Drawing on her decades of experience in AI research and governance, Dignum cuts through the hype and sensationalism that often surround AI and reveals why the most profound questions it raises are not about technology but ourselves.

The AI Paradox is a guide to seeing complexity with clarity, questioning the seemingly inevitable, and using AI in ways that prioritize our collective values. Each paradox explored in this book illuminates a particular dimension of these emerging technologies while prompting us to reevaluate our most common preconceptions about them. Can they truly replicate human decision making or do they simply magnify our blind spots and biases? Is AI the ultimate problem-solving tool or does it introduce more problems? Is justice for all achievable when it comes to AI? Who does AI serve, big tech or the common good? How do we even define AI?

With thought-provoking examples and paradoxical insights, this powerful little book challenges us to reimagine the role of these technologies in our lives, advocating for a collaborative, transparent, and inclusive approach that keeps humanity at the core of AI innovation.

A practical guide for professionals, corporate executives, entrepreneurs, and college students who want to achieve personal success without compromising their morals

Whether in our daily work or in our personal life, even the most conscientious people with the best intentions can make ethically questionable decisions. The 5 Questions for Ethical Decisions helps you identify your own ethical “true north” and avoid the costly missteps that can betray your values, damage your relationships, and even end careers.

Each of the book’s five chapters begins with a provocative question that illustrates a foundational aspect of ethical practice and explains how to apply these questions to define and uphold your own values. This practical yet robust framework provides a process for ethical decision-making in professional and personal matters that strengthens self-awareness, improves intentionality in decision-making, and enhances the ability to think beyond the moment in a pressure-packed, fast-paced, and rapidly changing world.

Drawing on David Miller’s two decades of experience teaching professional responsibility and ethics to a diverse audience, including undergraduate and graduate students, entrepreneurs and young professionals, and senior executives and civic leaders, The 5 Questions for Ethical Decisions offers compelling and inspiring stories of moral courage and success, cautionary tales of ethical compromise and failure, plus end-of-chapter takeaways and exercises to help build your “ethical fitness.”

A provocative book that demystifies China’s great democratic leap backward under Xi Jinping, revealing why the country’s embrace of capitalism has given rise to hard authoritarianism, mass surveillance, and one-man rule instead of democracy as many in the West had hoped

When China embarked on its transformative journey of modernization in 1979, many believed the country’s turn toward capitalism would put its totalitarian past to rest and mark the birth of a democratic, open society. Instead, China reverted to a neo-totalitarian state, one backed by one of the fastest-growing, most formidable economies on earth. The Broken China Dream pulls back the curtain on the regime of strongman Xi Jinping, revealing why the reforms of the post-Mao era have been reversed on nearly every front—and why the world failed to see it coming.

Exposing the truth behind China’s economic ascendency after the Cultural Revolution, Minxin Pei shows how, following Mao’s death in 1976, Deng Xiaoping strategically deployed the tools of capitalism to preserve the Chinese Communist Party. Deng kept intact the institutional foundations of totalitarianism even as he unleashed private entrepreneurship and courted foreign investment, giving China’s one-party state control of a vast repressive apparatus and the most critical sectors of the economy. Only a fragile balance of power among dueling factions prevented the rise of a totalitarian leader in the two decades after the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989—but this temporary equilibrium collapsed.

Essential to understanding today’s China, this meticulously researched book is a sobering account of why the country’s reformers and institutions could not stop a shrewd and ruthless politician like Xi from resurrecting dormant totalitarian practices that, for the foreseeable future, have spelled the end of the dream of a free and prosperous China.

A 2,500-year history of international currencies that reveals new insights about the future of the U.S. dollar—as well as crypto and central bank digital currencies

Doubts about the international dominance of the dollar are only growing amid worries about tariffs, political dysfunction, and fraying international alliances. Will the dollar continue to reign supreme? In Money Beyond Borders, the leading authority on international currencies, Barry Eichengreen, puts the dollar’s prospects in deep historical perspective by chronicling the entire history of cross-border currencies, from the invention of coins in the seventh century BCE to the cryptocurrencies of today and the central bank digital currencies of tomorrow.

Money Beyond Borders recounts how Greek and Roman coins became the first true international currencies. It tells how the Florentine gold florin became the “greenback of the Renaissance,” and how it was succeeded by Spanish silver and a Dutch fiat currency. The book explains why the British pound dominated the international economy in the nineteenth century, why the dollar rose to the top during World War II, and why the dollar has survived predictions of the imminent loss of its preeminence since the 1970s.

The long history of international currencies shows that the same factors that encourage their widespread use eventually lead to their abandonment. Money Beyond Borders makes a powerful case that the dollar is now on the downside of this cycle, and it considers who the winners and losers will be when there is flight away from the greenback. Revealing important patterns in the life cycles of international currencies over the past 2,500 years, the book offers valuable lessons and insights about how currencies rise—and why they fall.

From the world-renowned geobiologist and bestselling author of A Brief History of Earth, the epic story of a planetary conversation four billion years in the making

How did the world as we know it—from the soil beneath our feet to the air we breathe and the life that surrounds us—come to be? Geologists have proposed one set of answers while biologists have proposed another. Earth and Life is the first book to reveal why we need to listen to both voices—the physical and the biological—to understand how we and our planet became possible.

In this captivating book, Andrew Knoll traces how all life is sustained by Earth’s geological and atmospheric dynamics, and how life itself shapes the physical environment. Taking readers on a thrilling journey across four billion years of Earth history, he shows how Earth and life interact to cycle the very elements of life from rocks, water, and air, and how these and related processes control our climate, regulate our atmosphere, and support the diversification of life-forms great and small. Along the way, Knoll explains how we can draw on this history as we navigate the challenges of the Anthropocene, and how it can aid our search for life elsewhere in the universe.

Blending cutting-edge science with illuminating insights from a leading expert, Earth and Life explains how this ongoing interplay holds vital lessons for us today as humanity becomes an increasingly major voice in the conversation.